Violence and Democracy September 2019 Violence and Democracy Contents Acknowledgements 3 About the Authors 4 Preface 6 Ash Amin Beyond the politics of exposure: notes on violence 9 and democracy from the South Moyukh Chatterjee Commemorating violence in and beyond liberal democracies 13 Rin Ushiyama Violence, lower-caste politics and India’s post-colonial democracy 18 Sohini Guha Feelings in common: democracy as maintenance and repair 23 Dominic Davies In the realm of everyday state violence: changing landscape 28 and spaces in Kashmir Gowhar Yaqoob Untrusted democracies and failing security strategies: 33 crises that refocus democratic governance in Latin America and the Caribbean Alexandra Abello Colak Liberal democracy, advocacy of violence and criminal harm 39 Anushka Singh Democracy as protection against intra-communal violence 44 in Classical Greece Roel Konijnendijk Taking liberties: preliminary debates on political violence in India 48 Amit Upadhyay The crusade of transitional justice: 53 tracing the journeys of hegemonic claims Astrid Jamar 2 Violence and Democracy Acknowledgements This publication is a product of the UK-India Early Career Knowledge Symposium on Violence & Democracy, convened by the British Academy and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi from 29–30 November 2018. The symposium brought together 30 early career researchers from the UK and India and aimed to incentivise and establish engagement and collaboration across a broad range of disciplines within the humanities and social sciences, support the next generation of talent, and enhance scholarly mobility between India and the UK. This publication includes contributions from both India- and UK-based participants in the symposium. The British Academy would like to thank the Centre for the Study for Developing Societies for their support throughout this partnership, with particular thanks to Ravi Sundaram, Prathama Banerjee and Praveen Rai. The publication has been peer-reviewed to ensure its academic quality. The views expressed in the publication are those of the authors and are not necessarily endorsed by the British Academy, but are commended as contributing to public debate. 3 Violence and Democracy About the Authors Dr Alexandra Abello Colak is a Research Fellow at the Latin America and Caribbean Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research focuses on dynamics of violence and security governance in Latin American and Caribbean cities. She has co-developed action- oriented methodologies to work with residents of communities particularly affected by chronic violence. She is currently working on a project that uses a systemic approach to understand and address violence in Medellín, Tijuana and Kingston. Professor Ash Amin CBE FBA is Professor and Head of Geography at the University of Cambridge. He was Foreign Secretary and Vice-President of the British Academy from 2015 to 2019. He is an expert in urban studies, globalisation, migrations and multiculturalism. Among his recent books are European Union and Disunion (2017, with Philip Lewis), Seeing Like a City (Polity, 2016, with Nigel Thrift), Releasing the Commons: Rethinking the Futures of the Commons (Routledge, 2016, with Philip Howell) and Land of Strangers (Polity Press, 2012). He is currently working on migration and mental health, slum infrastructures, a new urban grammar, and frames of coexistence in Europe. Dr Moyukh Chatterjee is an Assistant Professor in the School of Policy and Governance at Azim Premji University. He is currently working on an ethnography of majoritarian state formation in India. His research examines how violence expands our notions of politics and democracy. Dr Dominic Davies is a Lecturer in English at City, University of London. He holds a DPhil and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship from the University of Oxford. His research explores the relationship between literary and artistic forms, social justice movements, and the built environment. His most recent book is Urban Comics: Infrastructure & the Global City in Contemporary Graphic Narratives (Routledge, 2019). Dr Sohini Guha is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Delhi. She received a PhD in Political Science from McGill University. Her research interests lie in the politics of identity (with a specific focus on caste), ethnic parties, democratisation in postcolonial societies, the politics of subaltern elites, and the anthropology of the state. She is at present completing a book on the politics of lower caste assertion in north India. Dr Astrid Jamar is a Lecturer in Development at Development Policy & Practice, The Open University. She is particularly interested in the professionalisation of transitional justice from anthropological, postcolonial and feminist perspectives, with a regional focus on the African Great Lakes region. She is currently developing work on the anthropology of dreams to explore cross-cultural experiences of violence and peace interventions. Dr Roel Konijnendijk is a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Leiden University. His research on war in Ancient Greece was published in Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History (Brill, 2018). His current project examines the historiography of this field. He taught on Athenian democracy and imperialism at the University of Warwick and is involved in collaborative work on ancient citizenship between Jagiellonian University and University College London. Dr Anushka Singh teaches at the School of Law, Governance and Citizenship, Ambedkar University Delhi and is the author of Sedition in Liberal Democracies (Oxford University Press, 2018). She has previously taught Political Science at the University of Delhi. She is currently interested in exploring the category of speech crimes through the framework of performative utterances. 4 Violence and Democracy Dr Amit Upadhyay is an Assistant Professor at the School of Livelihoods and Development, TISS Hyderabad Off-campus. He teaches courses in sociology, law and conflict. He writes on rights discourses mobilised by established as well as emerging protest constituencies. He is currently working on a British Academy seed funding project on rights in the Irish and the Indian constitutions. Dr Rin Ushiyama is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, and a Research Fellow at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge. His work looks at how culture, memory, knowledge and religion interact. His current project researches Japanese neo-nationalism, war memory and historical denial. Dr Gowhar Yaqoob is an independent researcher based in Srinagar (Kashmir). Her research practice focuses on exploring literary and visual cultures in history with an emphasis on Kashmir. She is currently working on a project on the history of love in conflict in Kashmir. 5 Violence and Democracy Preface Ash Amin ‘ There is no antinomy between violence and reason, in things concerning the state at least’. 1 Michel Foucault We are used to thinking of democracy as a limiting force on violence, through its structures to gather voices and interests, contain and channel grievances, and legislate civic rules of conduct. It is not unusual to suppose that democracy opposes rule by violence, taking the step beyond and resorting to aggression only to defend itself against its detractors and enemies. Yet this supposition may not hold in all parts of the world or indeed even among members of a democratic society used to other forms of customary rule that might not exclude violence. In turn, democratic societies routinely integrate, or turn a blind eye to, violence in their workings, ranging from the militarisation of force and security to the legitimate and illegitimate uses of violence to exert authority and influence, sometimes by the very movements that feel neglected or betrayed by existing democratic practices. Finally, with violence in its many forms and intensities so intrinsic to most societies, it is not as though democracy does away with violence, however serious the intent. History would seem to indicate that violence, including political violence, has been intrinsic to the evolution of human society. These observations allude to proximities and connections between violence and democracy, suggesting the need to understand one with the aid of the other, rather than in isolation. Understandings of violence – its existence, its forms, its interpretations and its power within societies – may illuminate understandings of the character, limits and potential of democracy in different societies. If violence and democracy are mutually constituted, or at least interdependent, our conceptions of, and hopes in, democracy must be recast, with interest shown in the forms and situations of violence that threaten democracy, but also those that might strengthen democracy. Interesting questions arise. If violence lies at the core of the democratic order, is the task to contain it so that democracy works better for all citizens? Is the desire for non-violent democracy a symptom of a narrow view of democracy, for example, the paradox in liberal democracy of violence against detractors but also subalterns reduced to violence in order to be heard? These were some of the sensitive questions addressed by an unencumbered group of emerging scholars from diverse regions and disciplines at the British Academy-Centre for the Study of Developing Societies symposium in Delhi. Our explicit intention